In the current ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise) HADR (high availability disaster recovery) with external replication system, remote topology is used for data replication. After the HADR system is setup, the remote topology cannot be changed. During a failover process, data activities on a primary node are switched to a standby node. Since the standby node uses remote topology for data replication, data is replicated from a data server on the standby node to an external data server through a replication server on the primary node. If the replication server on the primary node is down during the failover process, data cannot be replicated from the data server on the standby node to the external data server until the replication server on the primary node recovers.